Remove “Donation From Frances and Patrick Connolly” email

“Donation From Frances and Patrick Connolly” email is a scam email claiming that recipients have been selected to receive a donation of €2.5 million from Frances and Patrick Connolly, lottery winners who have given away large portions of their winnings. It’s a fairly standard scam email that wants to steal users’ personal information and money. If users engage with the email, they’ll be asked to provide their personal information and eventually some amounts of money.

 

The sender of this particular “Donation From Frances and Patrick Connolly” spam email claims to be Frances and Patrick Connolly. The sender claims that the recipient has been chosen to receive a donation of €2.5 million. Frances and Patrick Connolly are a couple who won £114.9 million in a jackpot in 2019 and have given away more than half of the winnings to those in need. The scammers behind this email are using a real situation to steal users’ money.

The “Donation From Frances and Patrick Connolly” spam email is a newer version of the classic “Spanish Prisoner” scam, common in the late 18th century. Back then, scammers would contact people claiming they were trying to break wealthy prisoners from a Spanish jail. Victims were asked to contribute money for bribes to the guards, with the promise of receiving a significant reward for their help, which, of course, never happened.

Modern versions of these scams typically claim that the recipient has either won or inherited a large sum of money, often several millions. In this particular case, users have been supposedly selected to receive a donation. Victims are encouraged to engage with the sender and provide personal information. The scammers aim to build a rapport with potential victims to enhance their chances of success. Once this connection is established, the scammers will usually request money for things like needing to confirm that a bank account is active or dealing with unexpected complications. From an outside perspective, the money requests may seem completely ridiculous but if trust has already been established with the victim, they may not question the requests.

The full “Donation From Frances and Patrick Connolly” spam email is below:

Subject: €2,500,000 (Two million five hundred thousand euros)Donation.

Hello We are pleased to inform you that you have received a donation of €2,500,000 (Two million five hundred thousand euros) from Frances and Patrick Connolly. This donation is part of our commitment to sharing our blessings with others. Please respond to this email to receive more details and instructions regarding the donation. We hope this gift will allow you to be a blessing to your family and the community at large. Please note that this is our second attempt to contact you. For more info: frances_patrickconnolly247@aol.com Warms Regards Frances and Patrick Connolly

If recipients reply to the email, they may be asked to share personal information such as their full name, home address, and phone number. Scammers often attempt to foster a connection with potential victims. This scam may go on for a while, with scammers requesting increasingly more sensitive information. By building trust over time, these scammers make their targets more vulnerable to manipulation. Eventually, they will ask for money.

Once scammers acquire personal information, they can either exploit it themselves or sell it to other criminals on various hacker forums. Sensitive data like full names, addresses, and phone numbers are especially valuable, enabling malicious actors to perform more sophisticated scams as scammers are more persuasive when they use recipients’ names or reference specific personal details. And if they obtain credit card information, it may result in unauthorized purchases and transactions.

Users are likely already fully aware of this but all emails promising any amount of money out of nowhere will be scams. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Why did you receive a scam email?

Many users may wonder about how their email addresses end up in the hands of scammers if they start receiving these types of emails. While some cybercriminals may randomly select targets, receiving a scam email typically suggests that the email address has been compromised. This is unfortunately common, as poor security practices by various services frequently lead to data leaks. To determine if their email address has been involved in a data breach, users can check on haveibeenpwned. Unfortunately, along with email addresses, other sensitive information is also often leaked.